A Democratic attorney on the Senate Judiciary Committee looking into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s possible effort to influence the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton helped edit the media talking points about the infamous tarmac meeting last year between Bill Clinton and Ms. Lynch while working for the Obama administration.
Mr. Clinton and Ms. Lynch met in what the two insist was a chance social encounter at the airport in Phoenix in June 2016 — just hours before the Obama Department of Justice weighed in on whether Mrs. Clinton had revealed classified information while secretary of state by using a private email account. That private meeting sparked a wave of FOIA requests by Judicial Watch, the American Center for Law, and others — which produced 413 pages of documents, including email correspondence — released earlier this week.
On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that former Justice Department attorney Paige Herwig, who was on the airplane when Mr. Clinton and Ms. Lynch met and later drafted the department’s media talking points, is now serving as counsel for Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to her LinkedIn profile and other sources.
Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape the way he talked about the Clinton email investigation, suggesting it made him worried about Ms. Lynch’s impartiality. Mr. Comey said that was one reason why he took it upon himself to buck Justice Department tradition and reveal his findings about Mrs. Clinton in the midst of last year’s chaotic presidential election.
The same set of Justice Department documents revealed that Ms. Lynch had also used the alias — “Elizabeth Carlisle” — in official Justice Department correspondence. Critics of the practice allege that officials use pseudonyms as a means of evading disclosure laws.
On Tuesday, President Trump tweeted his outrage over the lack of coverage the DOJ emails were receiving in the mainstream media. “E-mails show that the AmazonWashingtonPost and the FailingNewYorkTimes were reluctant to cover the Clinton/Lynch secret meeting in plane,” he wrote.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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